last gasp?

I couldn't resist posting this, though I just declared this blog dead. Whatevs...


from the Museum of Computer History.
Kitchen Computer
1969
Neiman Marcus, United States

"The Kitchen Computer was featured in the 1969 Neiman Marcus catalog as a $10,600 tool for housewives to store and retrieve recipes. Unfortunately, the user interface was only binary lights and switches. There is no evidence that any Kitchen Computer was ever sold. Inside was a standard Honeywell 316 minicomputer, billed as the first 16-bit machine at that price from a major computer manufacturer."

Potted Meat Thrives for 71 Years -- During Both Boom and Bust

Article from Advertising Age, June 16, 2008.

How has a product whose pink color, strange consistency and enviable molecular stability -- which made it fodder for countless jokes and even a Monty Python-inspired musical -- remained relevant as a foodstuff people actually serve to their kids? It's not necessarily the economy, stupid -- a fact that has a lot to do with the role of branding during tough economic times, when, conventional wisdom has it, consumers retreat to less-costly items.

It's a trend explained by the concept of "inferior goods," an economics term that less describes the makeup of a product than its place in consumer-demand theory. They're basically goods or services for which demand increases as income decreases and vice versa. They're staples that are somewhat dispensable in good times but more desirable in bad ones. Commonly cited examples include ramen noodles, bus transit, lipstick (as the New York Times recently postulated) and, often, Spam.

Read the whole article here.

kellogg

Attempt #2

See post below for commentary.

Here's the thing.

Es que I don't make any food that isn't vegetarian. So every recipe I care about flaunts its meatlessness by substituting things like spinach and black beans and sweet potatoes. Hence, not fit for this blog. So instead of posting an actual recipe, I have decided to post pictures of scary children eating unappetizing things.





Enjoy!

The jackpot of classic ads.

I was looking at a Life magazine from 1946 because there's an article about a steel worker's strike in Homestead. However, I of course got sidetracked by the crazy ads and other features. There's one about a church social and how Heinz ketchup "is man-bait". ("say the teenage girls who usually get the job of setting the table and acting as waitresses at the church suppers. They hope that all the good eats will put the boys in a fine humour, make them willing to help with the washing-up after supper"). My excitement about this lead me to adclassix.com, where you can browse by category. The link is to the grocery section, which is most pertinent for this blog.